Reincarnation, The Collective Unconscious, and Individuation

Mike King 
November 1994
Essay #2 Analytical Psychology and Eastern Mysticism

Contents

Abstract	1
Reincarnation and the East	1
Reincarnation and the West	2
Objections to the theory of Reincarnation	2
Reincarnation and Mysticism	3
Personal Experiences of Past Lives	3
Jung and Reincarnation	4
Reincarnation and Ancestors	6
Reincarnation and the Collective Unconscious	6
Individuation	7
Conclusions	7

Abstract
In this paper the concept of reincarnation and Jung's theories of the collective unconscious and the individuation process are looked at, in relation to mysticism. Eastern and Western attitudes to reincarnation are discussed, and some personal experiences described. Both the collective unconscious and reincarnation are seen as relevant to the individuation process, which in turn can be seen as part of the purgative phase on the mystic path. The reader is reminded that the term 'individual' relates to that which cannot be divided.
Reincarnation and the East
Reincarnation as a theory is widespread in the East, with its epicentre in India and spreading to countries that have adopted Buddhist or Hindu faiths. As a theory it is closely linked to the concept of karma, that is that good actions in one life are rewarded in subsequent lives, while bad actions lead to suffering in subsequent lives. The concept is therefore closely linked to a certain view of morality. In some forms of Buddhism there is a strong emphasis on karma as part of teachings on morality, which contrasts to the Buddha's reluctance to give any emphasis to individual reincarnation, that is to any speculation about an individual's previous existences. Reincarnation as a theory is accepted by the peoples of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain areas of the East, but for most it probably remains a theory on the same level as Darwin's evolutionary theories do for the peoples of the developed world: one is as little comforted by it in the face of death, as one is comforted by having contributed to the gene pool. That Krishna has to bash Arjunu over the head with the idea of reincarnation in the Gita (the early hints were not enough to remind a man whose culture was steeped in it) is probably typical. Only a few individuals in the East had a direct engagement with reincarnation: those who remembered their past lives (as Krishna does), or those who have the (clairvoyant) capability of seeing the past lives of others. This capability can be described as an occult gift, or one of the occult powers (siddhis), and are to be avoided, or at least not indulged in, according to most mystics. The Buddha's attitude can be taken as typical.
Various texts from the East deal quite specifically with reincarnation, the Tibetan Book of the Dead being a unique example. It may be that in (traditional) Tibet we have an example of a culture most exposed to the idea of reincarnation, and to religious practices directly linked to it. The Tibetan Book of the Dead prescribes a series of recitations at the deathbed of an individual to help him or her deal with the inbetween stage; to see the increasingly physical 'apparitions' in their descent to rebirth as projections; to resist the descent by clinging to the purity of the earliest phase; to resist the last phase, that of apparitions of copulating couples; and finally, if unable to resist the pull of sexual imagery, to remain as pure in thought as possible to secure a favourable birth. Tibetan lamas seek the incarnations of their holy men as infants - if the infant recognises possessions or persons previously associated with them this is taken as sufficient proof, even for the parents who then surrender their child to religious training.
Reincarnation and the West
While reincarnation has no official place in the three religions of the Book, there is a long history of the subject in the West, starting with Pythagoras, through Plato, to Papus, Steiner, and Edgar Cacey in more recent times. Reincarnation is more clearly part of the esoteric or occult traditions in the West, and probably attracts a more polarised response than in the East: people are more strongly for or against it as a theory. It crops up in unlikely places: in Whitman, in novels by Kerouak and Henry Miller, and on TV shows. The US 2nd world war general George Patten claimed to have been a Roman soldier; the pop singer Liberace claimed to be an incarnation of Liszt.
Pythagoras is supposed to have berated a man for kicking a dog, on the grounds that the dog had been a friend of his in a previous incarnation (raising the long-standing question of whether incarnation can go 'backwards' in terms of physical evolution). Plato, mainly through the mouthpiece of Socrates, proposes previous lives, though not quite in the Eastern sense of reincarnation. Reincarnation is part of many Western esoteric and occult traditions since that time. Papus - real name Gerard Encausse - published many volumes on these traditions, dealing with the Kaballah, the Rosicrucians, and the Gnostics. He became the head of the Gnostic 'Church' in the 1890s, and founded various orders, some of which became merged with our modern-day Freemasons. His book Reincarnation is probably a good overview of Western esoteric understanding of the subject, and is strongly Christian and moral in tone. For Papus, an understanding of sins committed in previous lives was an important part of atonement, as was an understanding of the disincarnated periods. Interestingly, the book includes a translation of Book 12 of the Laws of Manu (the Hindu equivalent of Moses the law-giver), where living beings are ordered in their spiritual hierarchy, and precise karmic results are given for each transgression. 
Other Western writers on reincarnation include Swedenborg, Jacob Boehme, Mme. Blavatsky, Annie Besant, Alice Bailey, and Edgar Cayce. Steiner perhaps attempted the most public elucidation of the subject, while Cayce was a rather reluctant convert to the belief in reincarnation.
Objections to the theory of Reincarnation
The objections to the theory of reincarnation are interesting to look at. In both East and West the sceptics can point to mechanistic problems, the main one of which is that the population is growing, so where do the new 'souls' come from? The more materialistic Western mind, with its emphasis on scientific knowledge, also objects to the persistence of memory and personality implied by reincarnation: memories and personality are a function of the brain, so when the brain dies they disappear.
The Buddha's objection is more significant for mysticism: it is not relevant or helpful to speculate on the subject: silence of the mind is the path (or goal); consciousness more important than its contents, particularly memories, whether of this life or any other.
Western objections, other than the 'scientific', are less clearly articulated, and more open to speculation. My proposition is that the Western concept of the individual, or the primacy of individuality, lies uneasily with the concept that one could have been someone else, particularly someone with opposing views and attitudes to those one currently holds. This relates to a certain rigidity of personality, and we shall return to this later. Meanwhile it is worth mentioning that the recent anxieties about 'false memory syndrome' are just as applicable to past life memories: in most documented cases the individual uncovers a past life memory through some the same kind of regression techniques used in uncovering memories from this lifetime.
Reincarnation and Mysticism
The difficulty with the study of mysticism is the sheer range of types that are studied under the heading 'mystic'. Some are vegetarian, some are not. Some are celibate, some are not. Some are non-violent, some go to war. Some talk about reincarnation, some do not. Clearly reincarnation is not a common factor amongst mystics, any more than vegetarianism is, though some claim a link between the two. There are two separate aspects to reincarnation and the mystics: did they believe in it and/or use it as part of their teachings, and did they have access to their own or others' past lives? A mystic may teach about reincarnation with no personal knowledge of it, on the other hand a mystic may have intimate knowledge of his or her past lives and keep silent on the subject.
On the mystic path reincarnation can be either a help or a hindrance. Memories of previous lives may help in a softening of personal boundaries, or, as part of a certain spiritual materialism, make the personality more rigid. As an occult gift it can be misused in various ways, or it can be used lovingly in healing (as with Cayce).
Personal Experiences of Past Lives
In order to give the reader a better understanding of my approach to the question of reincarnation I will briefly describe some of my own experiences. In my mid-twenties I participated in meditation techniques and psychotherapy workshops, including a technique called 're-birthing', a group-oriented way of re-living the birth trauma, where members of the group physically constrict the subject as they go through an emotional simulation of the trauma. My first past-life experience took place in a meditation. Half-way through I began to experience an extreme form of distress, and because of the nature of the group I was with, I allowed this to take over. It reached such a pitch that I started screaming, which rudely interrupted the meditation for the others, but, having experience with re-birthing, they gathered round and proceeded to help me re-live the supposed birth trauma. It turned out that I was re-living a death not a birth, for my screams reached a crescendo, after which I said 'They killed me with knives", and collapsed. I was left in a different world: I somehow 'became' another personality, a rather violent individual from the 10th century, and it was some hours before I felt myself again. This was the start of a period of exploration of past lives lasting several years, and which has left me with quite a different world-view. I came to understand that this death was at the hands of assassins (or soldiers) in the pay of my estranged wife of that era.
  There is not space here to describe the gradual unfolding of previous existences that took place then, but I will illustrate it with one more example. I had a dream of descending a large circular vault that went deep into the side of a hill, down steps that protruded from the wall, but with no hand-rail. I was captive, and in the company of guards. As I descended into the darkness a feeling of dread grew, and I gradually made out a figure hunched over a table in the well of the vault and dimly lit by candlelight, who seemed to be the source of the dread. The figure was petrified himself, in the sense of being alive but made of stone (i.e. implacable through hatred), and I was petrified through fear: it was probably the most terrifying dream I have had. Over the next few weeks it haunted me, until I probed further: I was being led to the torture chambers in the period of the Inquisition, and the hunched figure was an incarnation of my vengeful wife of the tenth century (vengeance was certainly due, I must add). The mere physical killing had not been enough: this time (s)he was to break my spirit. This duly took place over a period of time, and in the end my eyes were put out with red-hot pokers, after which I was sold to a beggar for a few pence, to provide him with a living. The details are not important; what was important for me at the time of uncovering these memories was the emotional development that took place in me as a result - what Jung would call an individuation process. It is also part of my own spiritual materialism.
Jung and Reincarnation
To the public Jung presented a dissmissive view of reincarnation, though he may or may not have had other thoughts in private. However, in Memories, Dreams, Reflections there are numerous passages that are reminiscent of past-life recall. It is not my suggestion that these were in fact past life experiences (though they may have been), but rather that his experiences are in fact quite common and can legitimately be interpreted in different ways. For example, Richard Jefferies described a kind of reverie or day-dream where he engages with the life and times of an unknown warrior buried two thousand years previous in a tumulus that he lies on. Such experiences for Jung undoubtedly contributed to his theory of the Collective Unconscious, and partly for that reason are of interest. All the following quotes are from Memories, Dreams, Reflections (MDR) unless otherwise stated.
In the preface to MDR Jung states: 'Similarly, other people are established inalienably in my memories only if their names were entered in the scrolls of my destiny from the beginning, so that encountering them was at the same time a kind of recollection.' (p.19.) This would probably be the observation of most sensitive, reflective people: why do some people who cross one's path stand out and others not? Jung's comment can be taken to support any number of ideas, including: reincarnation, his own theory of the collective unconscious, and the tradition of the 'Akashic Records' in which everything that has ever happened and will ever happen is already written down.
The first dream that Jung recalls (and remembers all his life as being of great significance) is of descending into a vault in which he sees a giant phallus (p.26). The detail of the room and its makeup later struck Jung as odd for the dream of a three-year old, commenting that it could not be a memory trace (p.28). As a twelve-year old he had the odd sense that he was two people: his boyhood self and also an old man: 'This "Other" was an old man who lived in the eighteenth century, wore buckled shoes and a white wig and went driving in a fly with high, concave rear wheels between which the box was suspended on springs and leather straps.' (p. 50.) Jung goes on:

I had still another experience that harked back to the eighteenth century. At the home of one of my aunts I had seen an eighteenth-century statuette, an old terra-cotta piece consisting of two painted figures. One of them was old Dr. Stuckelberger, a well-known personality in the city of Basel toward the end of the eighteenth century. The other figure was a patient of his; she was depicted with closed eyes, sticking out her tongue. The story went that old Stuckelberger was one day crossing the Rhine bridge when this annoying patient suddenly came up to him out of nowhere and babbled out a complaint. Old Stuckelberger said testily, "Yes, yes, there must be something wrong with you. Put out your tongue and shut your eyes." The woman did so, and Stuckelberger instantly ran off, and she remained standing there with her tongue stuck out, while the people laughed. This statuette of the old doctor had buckled shoes which in a strange way I recognised as my own. I was convinced that these were shoes I had worn. The conviction drove me wild with excitement. "Why those must be my shoes!" I could still feel those shoes on my feet, and yet I could not explain where this crazy feeling came from. I could not understand this identity I felt with the eighteenth century. Often in those days I would write the date 1786 instead of 1886, and each time this happened I was overcome by an inexplicable nostalgia. (pages 50 - 51.)

Jung treated the 'old man' as a second personality, one who 'belonged to the centuries', and it was not until his sixteenth or seventeenth year that his No. 1 personality, the active and comprehending ego, became more dominant (p.87). Later Jung mentions that his No. 2 personality 'felt himself in secret accord with the Middle Ages, as personified by Faust, ...' (p.107.)
Many of Jung's dreams, like his first, have an archaic content. At the end of his matriculation (high school) he dreamt of digging up bones on a burial mound over the Rhine, and finding, to his astonishment, the bones of prehistoric animals. Perhaps the most significant of his dreams in the context of reincarnation was one he had in about 1909 where he descended through various rooms belonging to different historical eras, arriving in a cave in which he found two skulls (p. 183). This was one of the dreams he related to Freud, who ignored the archaic thrust of it and focused on the skulls as symbolising a suppressed death-wish on Jung's part towards someone. Jung gave Freud what he wanted to hear (citing his wife and sister-in-law), but only as an experiment. The lie took the analysis no further, and marked the beginning of their separation. Jung commented after this that Freud's exclusive focusing on the sexual and aggressive left out so much interesting material, as in the example of this dream. Jung interpreted the levels of the house as representing the psyche, with the most archaic (and therefore primitive) level as the foundation.
Jung had many other dreams relating to the past, and several where he felt himself to be a twelfth century Crusader (p. 188 and 196.) In another dream he found himself 'caught in the seventeenth century' (p.229.) Jung is not in favour of the Oriental concept of reincarnation (he explicitly states that he does not believe in it on page 100), but later debates the issue in a more open way (pages 348 - 349). His conclusion is that he cannot tell whether the karma that he lives is the outcome of his past lives or rather his ancestors, but does suspect that if he had lived in previous centuries he was now born to answer unanswered questions. In his psychological commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Jung decides more definitely against the continuation of a personal history, favouring the archetypal or ancestral theory.
Reincarnation and Ancestors
Jung often relates to the past, or to archaic matters, in terms of ancestors. This is a widespread idea in so-called 'primitive' peoples, and is still widely believed in in modern-day Japan for example. Jung relates the origin of his Seven Sermons to the Dead to a fantasy that his soul (anima) had flown away, meaning that it had withdrawn to the land of the dead, to the realm of the ancestors. He was immediately 'haunted' by the dead, and wrote the Sermons to propitiate them (MDR, p.216). Jung mentions a dream concerning an assemblage of distinguished spirits of earlier centuries, relating this to "illustrious ancestors" (p. 338). His discovery is that the souls of the dead, far from being the repository of knowledge, are seeking it from the living, and concludes that there is an upper limit to the knowledge that the dead can attain: only in life on earth can consciousness be raised (p. 342).
Reincarnation and the Collective Unconscious
The collective unconscious, for Jung, is a complex idea, and it would seem that he uses the concept to explain a variety of psychic phenomena. First of all it seems that his dreams and recollections of previous times have come from the collective unconscious - the part of it that has a history. The religious experiences and the archetypes seem to relate to another part of the collective unconscious that is universal - it is the pure basis of the human psyche and is essentially the same for a person of any period in history or any culture. This part is not directly reachable, but makes itself known through the archetypes. The archetypes can be seen as emanations of the collective unconscious and encounters with them are powerful and transformatory - the root of religious experience and psychological healing. 
At its simplest the collective unconscious is how an individual can come to know something by an inner process, rather than from outside. An artistic gift, for example, may arise this way. The theory of reincarnation is competing here to explain some of the phenomena associated with the collective unconscious: the artistic gift may have been developed over previous lifetimes, for example. Many of Jung's dreams can be explained as either arising from previous lives, or from the collective unconscious. One of the differences between the two approaches is that reincarnation is more literal, while the collective unconscious is more symbolic. In fact the two theories are neither contradictory nor dependent on each other.
Individuation
Jung's concept of individuation can be stated as the transformation of the psyche through the relationship between the ego and the contents of the unconscious (including the collective unconscious). The unconscious also includes a personal component, and there should be no difficulty, if we accept reincarnation, in expanding this to include a personal unconscious relating to previous lives. Individuation, as Jung defines it, suffers little from this change. Individuation 'events', such as my experience of the Inquisition described earlier, are emotionally and psychologically similar to Jung's dreams or visions, except that they may present a more extreme challenge to one's identity. For example, if a man's dreams or visions relating to the anima result in integration of previously suppressed feminine aspects of the personality, this may be less of a challenge than discovering that he was a woman in a previous life. My dream of descending the vault towards destruction is not that different from Jung's dream of the house with many levels with skulls in the basement, and it may be that my interpretation in terms of reincarnation is because my temperament is more inclined to the literal; Jung's interpretation may be because he is more inclined to the symbolic.
Conclusions
The concepts of reincarnation and the collective unconscious are not mutually exclusive. An individuation process may as easily result from an encounter with archetypal material from the collective unconscious as from personal material from previous lives. Jung's individuation process can be seen as a form of catharsis or purification; repressed material from the collective history or from the personal history (whether from this life or before) has to be dealt with, consciously or unconsciously, literally or symbolically. Individuation in this sense can be see as part of the purgative stage on the mystic path. The danger of Jung's individuation as a deliberate and externalised process (as opposed to the more internalised purgative traditions) lies with a reinforcing of identification with the contents of the mind, leading to a rigidity of mind, and an endless involvement. (Past life explorations can be even more endless!) The mystical path is about reaching another kind of individuation: finding that which cannot be divided. This is not to be found in the realms of the psychological, so individuation in Jung's terms can best be seen as part of the purgative or preparatory stages. For the mystic the place of Jung's individuation process can be alongside a devotional or awareness-based religious practice, and it may involve either or both principles: reincarnation or the collective unconscious.